


When Sirius Left

by Remus_la_swearwolf



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Battle of Hogwarts, Bring Back Black, Creepy, Department of Mysteries, Full Moon, Ghosts, Grimmauld Place, Harry Potter - Freeform, James Potter - Freeform, Lily Evans - Freeform, M/M, Marauders, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Nymphadora Tonks - Freeform, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Post-Sirius Black in Azkaban, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sirius Black Fest, Werewolf, post azkaban, remus lupin - Freeform, sirius black - Freeform, sirius falls through the veil, wolfstar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2020-12-24 02:36:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21091988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Remus_la_swearwolf/pseuds/Remus_la_swearwolf
Summary: Sirius has fallen through the veil, but Remus is sure he isn't quite lost.





	When Sirius Left

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt #: 59  
Disclaimer: Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.

He had always known it was going to end this way. The first time Sirius had left, it had been more painful than ripping his soul out would have been, and more horrific than when the moon took him over and made him a savage beast. And when Sirius had come back, he almost hadn't allowed himself to believe it.

After twelve years, twelve years of blood, and pain, and the moon, and then the crippling numbness which was worse in its own way, Sirius had finally come back into Remus' life, dimmed, but still burning brighter than his star in the sky. His light chased away the shadows, loneliness, and fear, and for a while, Remus Lupin had been happy.

With Sirius came innocence, clarity, and a reprieve from pain, as addictive as any scented smoke or expensive powder to be found.

And then Sirius had fallen through the veil, swallowed up by the rippling gossamer gauze and the seething whispers that came from all around.

They seemed to call to Remus, welcoming and familiar, like old friends. But he knows what would have happened if he'd stepped through there. He'd be gone. As gone as Sirius, but still not with him. Because Sirius isn't there, and Sirius isn't waiting for him. He's less than dust, or atoms, or the dark writhing shapes that shadows are made of.

And, of course, Remus longs for oblivion, but even more than that, he longs for Sirius, Sirius who left him and then came back, and Sirius who left again, and really isn't coming back this time.

When he closes his eyes, he can still hear Sirius' careless laugh, rebellious and free as he was in his youth, challenging her, as she casts the spell, and he falls back into the veil, the light of his last laugh still fading away in his eyes.

Remus remembers freezing where he stands, ice creeping over his heart and frost at his fingertips, as he watched Sirius go, the weight of what he'd never told him crushing him, twice as heavy as it had ever been. Heavier than the moon, heavier than the stones of Azkaban, heavier than the slackened bodies of two people Remus had loved more than himself lying dead in the decimated ruins of what had once been a place Remus could call "home".

He wants to shatter and break into a thousand tiny pieces, each of them swept up by the current that threatens to overtake him and toss him on the rocks, but he can't, because there's a war going on, and Dumbledore needs him, and Harry is screaming. It pierces Remus, and cuts into him like a shard of glass, and everything fades into insignificance beside it.

Harry. Harry is the number one priority right now. Harry, who has just lost the singular person who cared the most for him in this world, and who can't possibly afford to lose another person to the darkness right now. So Remus clenches his shattered pieces together, and crushes the fractured shards together, as crystalline fragments splinter off and are carried away by the wind that rushes out from the veil, and blasts its icy currents over Remus' damaged heart.

He keeps himself together, and holds Harry back as he screams, screams so loudly his ears beg to bleed, even though he's the one that's falling apart, and needs somebody to patch his pieces back together. He allows himself to shed a single tear, and one last anguished look at the man he loved but never had the courage to tell, and then he's sacrificing his own sanity to tell Harry it's all right, and that Sirius is gone, although he feels like he's reminding himself more than anyone else.

If his lies were real, they'd choke him.

After it all happens, and the people know Voldemort is back, the war starts in earnest. It's just as dark and bloody as the first war, and it brings with it the same sense of hopelessness and desperation that everyone who survived it the first time carries as a shadow on their hearts.

The air is full of whispers, and crackling momentum as something black and looming grows ever closer, bringing with it tears and funerals and storm clouds. The people are panicking, and lies and corruption are at the heart of everything.

The Order still meets, but rarely. Most have given up, by now, accepting their inevitable doom at the cruel, pale hands of Lord Voldemort. Those who had treated Remus was grudging respect bordering on indifference now treated him with suspicion, and as something despicable. The ones who don't, shoot him constant looks of pity that make Remus feel like a wilted flower in Winter, losing all its petals slowly, which is almost worse.

Molly, is perhaps the only one who knows just how much Sirius meant to Remus. To the others, Sirius was simply someone Remus once knew in his youth, and his death a shame and an inconvenience to the Order. But he was everything to Remus, even when he was in Azkaban, and he's still Remus' life, even though he's dead.

After a while, the pain is less, numbed by the attacks and the chaos, and simply because Remus can't afford to have Sirius on his mind when he's already fighting for his life, and this might finally be the thing that takes him down.

Slowly, slowly, he grows greyer, more gaunt, and the scars on his body increase in number, although not all of them are from the wolf. A scar for each of the fallen.

Remus talks to him, occasionally. "Sirius, Sirius," he whispers. "Sirius, where are you?"

He might weep as he speaks, drunk and breaking into a thousand small pieces he'll never be able to pick up, and sometimes he'll just talk to Sirius ever so casually, be it about chores or the Order, or somebody who's been ticking all his boxes lately.

Sometimes he'll lie back on his bed, in a dingy room he doesn't belong in, and he'll stare at the ceiling and laugh hopelessly, "Sirius, Sirius, how did we ever come to this?"

If he's drunk and self-destructive enough, he'll allow himself to pretend that Sirius is listening, and that the wind whistling across the slates is really Sirius whispering back to him. His weary eyes rove hungrily over the empty space where Sirius should be, only to have the temporary light with in them be extinguished in his disappointment, although he knew he was always going to be wrong, because Sirius was dead and gone and he was never, ever coming back for him, not this time.

As time goes on, Remus stops drinking quite so much, and the lines on his forehead soften ever so slightly as he loses himself in a pair of storm coloured eyes once more. It's easy to forget they aren't Sirius' eyes, and Remus stops talking to the creaking floorboards, and the breeze rustling the curtains which cover the tightly shut windows, but it becomes harder when hurt colours Tonks' tone, and her hair switches shades in unhappiness and confusion.

She's always wondered why Remus always holds her eyes as they kiss.

Remus can't keep lying to himself, or to her, so the fighting starts and the tears and the shouting. Remus seeks purpose in dangerous missions and foolish escapades, fleeing from the stress of a hasty and impulsive marriage, perhaps a rebound union to help him forget.

Remus almost hates Sirius for being the one he will never get over, for ruining the one good thing that has happened to him since that night in the Department of Mysteries, even though he isn't there. Remus starts to whisper, "Sirius, Sirius," again, after so long, even though he knows it isn't healthy and that he should be happier and not so caught up in the complicated, disastrous web of nightmares and insanity that is Sirius.

Sometimes he thinks he hears an answering call in the wind or in the howl of the wolf as he loses the last shreds of his humanity as the moon stretches, and swells, and bathes the velvet fabric of the night in its cold, pale light.

As Remus stands, naked and bare, surrendering himself to the ravages of the moon, it tugs on his bones and his soul, and he can almost imagine it to be the gentle caress of a lover, a hand brushing against his cheek, and he imagines holding Sirius in his arms for one last time, and losing himself in him, pretending that it's forever, and they're the only ones in existence. He regrets all the wasted years of their youth, when they'd been busy playing games and being foolish and angry and hurt, when instead of pointing fingers and spitting curses they could have spent their glory years basking in the warm and simple light of each other's love.

The war comes, and Remus does his best to do right by Harry, something that never should have been his job in the first place, he thinks bitterly. So many fall, people that Remus has loved at one point, including Tonks, and at the end, he's somehow still standing in the ashes of his home and the fallen.

The battle is won, and everyone is celebrating, and the world is so much brighter, but Remus can't feel it like they do. The world can't be bright for him, because the people who used to remind him of the light are all gone, leaving him at the centre of an empty chandelier, hanging dustily in a forgotten ballroom that still echoes with memories of laughter and music that used to play.

He has nowhere to go, now that Tonks is gone, and everyone else is trying their best to forget the war and return to their families and lives. Dumbledore is dead, and nobody has any further use for him.

So he lives in Grimmauld Place by himself, walking the same crumbling and musty corridors Sirius used to roam, tortured by memories. Remus never leaves, and nobody ever comes to him, and he is just fine with that.

He feels closer to Sirius here, more than he has anywhere else, amongst the flickering gas lamps, and the rustling tapestries, and the lilting, dusty notes of the piano that seem to make their way around the house on a quiet afternoon. Remus has never found where it came from. And he doesn't care. It's pleasant, in a way, although it's slightly disconcerting, seeing as it's always the exact melody that Sirius had composed for Remus in their Sixth Year.

Sometimes Remus just closes his eyes and listens, listens to the silence and the whispering, and the shifting of the dust.

They used to come to him, after the war. When the memories of it were still fresh and newly torn in everybody's head, they would come and see him, and remember the dead, vowing to never forget. But one by one, they faded from Remus' heart and from his home, as the drapes rustled in the stagnant air of the house, and the soft sighing of the wind formed whispers in their minds.

People always look behind them when they visit. And when they realise that Remus is always looking and smiling faintly at empty corners, and shadows behind curtains or doors, they stop visiting altogether. They feel -- watched, they say.

Remus doesn't mind. He likes it, the solitude. It gives him more time to think, and lets his mind play sweet tricks on him.

There is a portrait of Sirius, on the highest floor. It's in the attic, really. Remus supposes it was painted before Sirius ran away and swore never to enter that house again, and fell into his arms, bleeding and crying for everything he'd lost, but didn't know was gone. Sirius' mother must have put it there, right after she blasted her eldest son off the family tapestry.

Remus talks to him. He's fifteen, and arrogant, and cocky, and everything Sirius was before he was dragged off to Azkaban. He's still a star, burning and bright and blazingly hot, not dimmed by the years long stint in this dusty attic full of scurrying creatures and forgotten magic.

'You've got old, Moony,' Sirius tells him, a laugh in his eye, 'but you're still hot.'

Remus stares back and smiles sadly. 'You've gotten older, too,' he says.

Sirius throws back his head and laughs scornfully. 'Hah! Me? Look at me. I'll never age. I'll be young forever while everyone else goes gray and old and turns to dust. You'll die, too. I will live forever, as I am.'

Remus gives him a long look, and then draws the curtains back across the boy's youthful face. This isn't Sirius. Not his Sirius. His Sirius could never be so cruel.

'You're dead,' Remus mumbles, pointing his wand at the picture as it babbles and yells and curses, filthier than the portrait of Walburga Black downstairs. This isn't Sirius, and it never was. The old woman must have done something to it.

He tries not to return, after that happens. He doesn't need this furious painting of the boy he loved, not when he's downstairs, laughing from behind opened doors, crying at midnight, or silhouetted by the curtains, in the creak of the floors at night, or in the melodies of the piano that weave their way around Remus' twisted mind and tattered heart.

But the picture frame is empty, next time he checks.

His friends are dancing shadows, and images that flee as soon as you look at them in the mirror. His companion is the soft singing that haunts him, singing their song, and the cold hand that brushes his cheek as he jerks up from his troubled slumber in the early hours of the morning, before the sun has fully risen. The inbetween hours.

Remus makes sure to never let the whispers run from him, to keep them calling his name. He doesn't know it, but the people say he's always muttering.

It's years before anyone visits, and Remus has been just fine. He has friends of his own.

The doorbell rings, and Remus thinks at first that it's just his imagination. But the bell rings again, loud, and clanging, and jarring, and Remus growls angrily, because it agitates the dust and upsets the lights.

He moves to the door, and it's Harry. Sharp guilt pierces Remus, as he realises that he's all Harry had left of his parents, or Sirius, and that he hasn't been around for him.

A smile breaks over the boy's face and chases away the anxious green eyes, and Remus can't help but think of how he's the spitting image of James. And, of course, there's always Lily in his eyes.

He embraces the boy, and welcomes him into what should have been his home as well. He can't help but notice that Harry is looking over his shoulder all the time, and doesn't turn his back to open doors. He can also tell that Harry doesn't like the way the melodies of the piano creep and crawl into his ears, softly and almost imperceptibly, although they fade as soon as they begin to talk.

He asks how Remus is, and Remus doesn't know what to tell him. What can he say?

They talk for what seems like hours and hours on end, about Voldemort, and the war, and Tonks, and Harry's parents. They've never really talked about James and Lily properly, Remus realises. He should have done this long ago. He tells Harry everything. From the way that James had loved Lily from the moment he first set eyes on her, to the way that they had accepted him for what he was without reservation, and how Lily had never stopped trusting him, not even for a second, even when his best friends had turned against him. He doesn't tell Harry about the cold, long years after that, though. He doesn't think he could do that.

Eventually, despite how they've both been trying to avoid it, the talk turns to Sirius. The curtains don't like that. They breathe and rustle in protest.

Remus can tell by the guilt in his eyes that Harry still blames himself somewhat for Sirius' death, and Remus can't help but blame him a little too. But it was always going to be Sirius' rashness and impetuosity that led him to his downfall. And his selflessness, and constant willingness to place himself in the path of danger when it meant saving somebody he loved. Remus sometimes wishes he could be brave like Sirius.

Remus thinks of what Harry could have had if Sirius hadn't left him. Hadn't left them both. It's selfish of you, he thinks at Sirius, selfish of you to ignore him. He needs you.

Harry is talking, and he looks up at Remus in surprise. 'Who needs me?' he asks.

Remus blinks at him, and realises he's been standing up. He shuffles backwards, his joints still aching from the last lonely moon, and settles back in his chair. 'It's nothing,' he says. 'Go on.'

Harry still looks mystified, but he goes on talking, although Remus is more preoccupied with the way the sunlight is playing over the empty space behind the door. The ticking of the clock above the door has never seemed louder. The sunlight isn't reflecting properly off the silver hands, Remus notes idly.

He looks at the space on the sofa next to Harry. It's empty.

The room has gone oddly quiet, and Remus turns his head to Harry.

'Remus?' asks Harry. 'What're you looking at?'

Remus shakes his head and smiles fondly. 'Nothing. I'm so rude,' he apologises. 'What were you saying?'

'Well,' Harry responds, excitement bubbling through his tone, and a huge smile cracking on his face, 'Ginny and I -- well, we're going to have a baby.'

'That's great,' Remus says, trying to mirror Harry's joy. Because that's all he is, now. Hollow eyed reflections and empty portraits. And whisperings in the halls.

'And we've decided that we'd love for you to be Godfather,' announces Harry.

'I'd be honoured,' Remus tells him, although he can think of a thousand people that are more worthy than he is.

A sudden wind courses its way through the long corridor outside, and the door swings backwards on its hinges, leaving the way out clear. The curtains rustle and whisper, and Remus tricks himself into thinking he sees dark shapes beyond it. The portraits murmur and stir in agitation, and the lamps sputter and flicker. The shadows behind the door shift.

Harry freezes, and looks around in alarm. He stands up, looking askance at Remus.

'I think you should go now,' Remus tells him flatly.

Harry swallows and nods, picking up his things, and heads for the front door. He takes one last look at the disturbed room behind them, and he glances over his shoulder as he moves down the hall.

He takes Remus' withered old hand as he stands by the door. Sunlight floods into the darkened house for the first time in years. 'Are you sure --' Harry begins hesitantly, 'are you sure that you're all right in there? Maybe you shouldn't be all by yourself. I know it can --' he swallows nervously again, and Remus can see his Adam's Apple bobbing, 'I know it can be odd in there.'

When Remus looks at him, Harry thinks it's like he's seeing him for the first time. His eyes are distracted, and he keeps looking back at something in the hallway Harry can't see.

He can't take it a minute longer. 'Goodbye, Remus,' Harry says hastily. 'It was good seeing you.'

Remus simply nods, and closes the door. He walks back to the front room, with a view of the street, and watches as Harry goes. He's aware of a presence next to him, but doesn't acknowledge it, or look, for fear that it might flee from him.

'He turned out well enough,' a warm, familiar voice says.

Tears flood Remus' eyes, but he blinks them back and nods, afraid of what might happen if he tries speaking.

He can see a sleek mass of black hair through the tears, and when he blinks, the image doesn't fade. It's Sirius, next to him, Sirius, as beautiful as he ever was, his hair perfectly long, and his grey eyes just a bit darker than they were when Remus knew him.

A pale, white hand is extended towards Remus, and he stares at it, wondering why Sirius has decided to show himself now. He looks up at his face, but his expression hasn't changed. The hand is still outstretched. The piano has started playing faintly in the background, but the portraits are silent for once. Remus moves closer to Sirius, and takes his hand. It's warm, and feels just as it always has.


End file.
